Freitag, 11. April 2014

Teratic Tome DCC: Onlooker

Dead Cyclops presents a DCC RPG conversion for a monster from +Rafael Chandler's Teratic Tome. If you like this, check out the Kickstarter for Rafael's new bestiary: Lusus Naturae.
The Onlooker belongs to a class of monsters called audiences, so let's talk about those first...

Audiences

Created by the Tenebrous Halflings of the Infinite Crypt, audiences were once among the most dreaded of monsters.

When several of the Tenebrous Halflings neared death, they would perform a necromantic ritual that transferred their souls into a monstrous body that had been stitched together by their chirurgeons. Within this new body, a floating sack of flesh adorned with tentacles, each audience was a collection of diverse personalities.

The audience then continued to stalk the silent corridors of the Infinite Crypt, gathering information, tormenting lesser beings, and assembling troves of forbidden knowledge.

Then Shauva Tiridan, the mad mage, took their eyes.

A wizard of unimaginable power, she hunted down every audience and carved out its eyes to create her legion of ambulators (q.v.).

Now blind and insane, the audiences still glide through dark tunnels, but their mutilator died years ago, so they have no one to vent their rage on save for the occasional adventurer who blunders into their path. Though eyeless, an audience is nonetheless acutely aware of its surroundings, and is not penalized for blindness -- nor is it affected by illusions, or spells such as darkness.

Each audience has the power (and the intellect, and the souls) of several ancient halfling mages, but much of that strength was blunted when the eyes were taken; still, an audience is a formidable foe.

The onlooker appears as a large sphere of greenish-blue tissue, from which dangle 10 tentacles of different lengths. An enormous mouth protrudes from the four-foot-wide central sphere, and each of the tentacles ends in a chattering mouth. The monster sweats a milky substances that reeks of fresh fruit.

Often found near crypts, ossuaries, or graveyards, the onlooker's eleven souls bicker and argue incessantly, debating the necromantic lore that once was their bailiwick. Now, eyeless and stripped of many powers, they float through dust-blanketed necropoleis in search of the interesting-tasting cadavers that sustain them (and occasionally serve as raw material for an experiment of some kind).

If approached, the onlooker will stop chattering long enough to bite with its tentacled mouths (3-10 points of damage) or its central maw (2-12 points); if it feels that the enemy is a dangerous enough to warrant it, the central maw can spit forth magic missiles (6d4+6, 180' range, once per day), and the ten other mouths can utter the following spells (once per day each):